How We Do It: Jan. 2001 - Creative Training at Signature Landscape

I sent my employees for a week of training at Post Landscape in Atlanta, Ga. I developed a friendship with Jim McCutcheon, Post’s director of operations, and I thought we could learn a lot by going to Atlanta and training with some of Post’s employees. Post could use our employees for free, and our employees could learn some hand pruning techniques and refine other skills.

Jim and I finalized our plans for the week-long trip. I selected a crew of six employees who drove 14 hours to Atlanta. My employees stayed in some of Post’s corporate rental apartments. Signature and Post split the rent, and I gave each employee $125 for the week’s worth of food.

I held two pretrip meetings for the crew members scheduled to go on the trip and this gave them a chance to ask questions. We talked about what we wanted to get out of the project, what our visions were and what to expect.

The anticipation was great among my key foremen, who often don’t attend the larger conventions. We sent journals with them so they could record their thoughts, and I wrote personalized notes in each journal, noting each employee’s great accomplishments.

During this training trip, our main goals were to have fun and to learn.

In particular, we wanted to improve our hand pruning skills. Post employees do a lot of shrub pruning work, and I wanted my Signature Landscape employees to learn this. We also looked at Post’s use of seasonal color, saw some exciting new varieties and observed differences in our design techniques. In fact, one of our employees was truly impressed by the scope of a residential project that required 12 trucks, 25,000 bulbs and a 15- to 20-person crew.

On our trip, positive learning experiences were plentiful. In addition, everyone at Post was extremely cordial and took the time to show us around the city and their properties.

Still, we did experience some difficulties. The journey to and from Atlanta was long, and some employees said that one or two days should have been shaved from the length of our stay. Leaving their families behind for a week was tough, though we did give each employee a phone card to call home.

Also, while the trip - budgeted at $5,000 - was expensive, the investment was worthwhile. Although only six of us went on this trip, the whole company benefited from it.

In the future, I would like to do this type of training on a smaller scale for our irrigation service technicians or perhaps send some of our designers and planting teams to work with a design/build company.

Through this experience we learned that the best way to train employees is to have them observe how other landscape companies work.